Palm scanners get thumbs
up in schools, hospitals
Brian Shane, USA TODAY
Palm-scanning technology
uses unique vein patterns as a handy ID system.
11:32PM EST November 25.
2012 - At schools in Pinellas County, Fla., students aren't paying for lunch
with cash or a card, but with a wave of their hand over a palm scanner.
"It's so quick that a
child could be standing in line, call mom and say, 'I forgot my lunch money
today.' She's by her computer, runs her card, and by the time the child is at
the front of the line, it's already recorded," says Art Dunham, director
of food services for Pinellas County Schools.
Students take about four
seconds to swipe and pay for lunch, Dunham says, and they're doing it with 99%
accuracy.
"We just love it. No
one wants to go back," Dunham says.
Palm-scanning technology
is popping up nationwide as a bona fide biometric tracker of identities, and it
appears poised to make the jump from schools and hospitals to other sectors of
the economy including ATM usage and retail. It also has applications as a
secure identifier for cloud computing.
Here's how it works: Using
the same near-infrared technology that comes in a TV remote control or Nintendo
Wii video game, the device takes a super high-resolution infrared photograph of
the vein pattern just below a person's skin. That image, between 1.5 and 2.5
square inches, is recorded and digitized.
The PalmSecure device is
made by document-scanning manufacturer Fujitsu. So far, no other company has a
palm scanner on the market — though at least one other company is working on
the technology.
Like many technological
breakthroughs, the development began accidentally. A decade ago, a Fujitsu
engineer in Tokyo mistakenly ran his hand over a page scanner and it yielded an
output that piqued his curiosity. Testing eventually showed that the veins in
the palm of your hand are as unique as a fingerprint and can be photographed
under infrared light.
Fujitsu has seen
double-digit quarterly sales growth in each of the last two years, says Bud
Yanak, director of product management and partner development for Fujitsu
Frontech North America.
Palm scanners are
installed in more than 50 school systems and more than 160 hospital systems in
15 states and the District of Columbia, Yanak says.
Pinellas County Schools
were the first in the nation to bring palm scanning to their lunch lines about
18 months ago. They are being used by 50,000 students at 17 high schools and 20
middle schools. Soon, the program will expand to 60,000 more students at 80
elementary schools, Dunham says. The 2% of students who opt out can still use
cash.
He says hygiene isn't a
concern because students don't need to touch the device, but only hold their
hand directly above it, to register a scan.
At hospitals, the scans
are making patient registration more efficient, and prevent sharing of
information by patients that could lead to insurance fraud, says Carl Bertrams,
senior vice president of sales and marketing for palm scan software maker HT
Systems in Tampa.
A palm scan's precision
record-keeping also avoids possible confusion if patients have the same name.
For instance, a hospital system in the Houston area with a database of 3.5
million patients has 2,488 women in it named Maria Garcia – and 231 of them
have the same date of birth, Bertrams says.
HT Systems president David
Wiener won't reveal revenue but says that since 2007, they've got more than 160
hospitals for clients and have scanned more than 5 million patients.
At Wisconsin's UW Health
system, palm scans have been used for about two years, says Dawn Gramse, a
senior systems analyst. Soon, they'll start using self-service palm-swiping
kiosks for patients to check themselves in.
"You'd hear about
other biometric scanners that are out there, and you'd see the Mission
Impossible movies with the eye scanners, and you'd never think you can
integrate that kind of technology into a hospital," she says, "but
you can."
Not everyone loves the
idea of scans.
Students in Carroll
County, Md., schools are using lunch line palm scanners, but 7-year-old Ian
Webb isn't one of them. His father, Michael Webb, decided to have Ian, a
second-grader, opt out of the program at Piney Ridge Elementary in Eldersburg.
"My son is not using
the technology," he says. "I'll be honest, I think it's horrible.
It's an intrusion into our children's rights."
Webb says he's concerned
that use of the scanners by elementary school students normalizes the use of
biometrics and anesthetizes young children to recognizing privacy violations
later in life.
"I understand taking
an iris scan of a pilot at an airport, so you know it's the right pilot flying
the plane" he says. "This is that level of equipment they're
installing in a line that serves steamed corn. I don't think it rises to the
level of steamed corn."
Chris Calabrese,
legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, says
the key to this particular kind of biometrics — that is, the kind a user
consents to, unlike some facial recognition software — is ensuring that all
data be treated sensitively.
"If it's a technology
that works really well, it won't be long before you're offering your palm in a
lot of different locations, and you will be concerned about who's got access to
that information and what they want to do with it," Calabrese says.
The technology is
expanding. Fujitsu in September launched a new line of palm-scanning ATMs in
Japan, according to a company news release. Customers of Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank
now can access cash machines without a bank card or personal identification
number.
And while Fujitsu says
it's the only company with such a product on the market right now, computer
company Intel Corp. is working with palm-scanning technology.
Palm scanning can be used
as a substitute for clunky, hard-to-remember passwords, says Sridhar Iyengar,
director of security research at Intel Labs.
"There is a way
around it, and biometrics is one option," Iyengar. "Replacing what
you know — passwords — with what you are ... it's an ease of use issue. It's
harder to spoof, and you're not likely to forget your fingerprints anytime
soon."
Shane also reports for The
(Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times
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